Animal
by Drown Me In Blue
Summary: Shiro had chosen the drugs over him. Ichigo had been abandoned far too much over the course of his life to forgive something like that.


**Pairing: **_Hollow Ichigo (Shiro) x Ichigo Kurosaki_

**Music** I Feel You_, by Schiller feat. Peter Heppner_

**Word count:** ~ 1,500

**Rating:** T

* * *

_**Prompt 11: **__Animal_

* * *

He had the eyes of a wounded animal.

Ichigo paused where he was at the mouth of the alley, watching the pale figure huddled against the filthy wall of the building. Something was churning in his gut, something very like disgust, but it wasn't. There was too much regret for that, too much _relief-sadness-fury-horror-howcouldyoudothisAGAIN_ for it to be simple disgust.

"Shiro," he said quietly.

Gold-on-black eyes jumped to him. The pupils were hugely dilated and there was no recognition in them. Already, Shiro looked thinner and washed out, like a rag run through the wash one time to many. No acknowledgement, no embarrassment at being seen this way, no remorse for what he had done—there was nothing but the _daze-need-want-musthave-giveme_ of a junkie in the grip of addiction.

With a soft sigh, Ichigo slung his backpack full of groceries over one shoulder and approached, crouching down next to Shiro. "Hey," he said softly. "Shiro. Let's go home, okay? You need to sleep this off. Can you get up?"

There was no response, only a stilted, high-pitched giggle that made the hairs on the back of Ichigo's neck stand up. He fought down the reaction and pulled Shiro's arm over his shoulder, levering them both to their feet. Slowly, so that Shiro's dazed brain could process the motion, he stepped out of the alley, guiding them down the deserted street. They were already close to his apartment, and Ichigo wondered if that was a subconscious urge on Shiro's part, returning to the place that had been home for so long.

Not now, though. They'd both had a part in tearing that apart, but Ichigo knew that most of the blame rested squarely on his own shoulders.

There was no one to cast them odd looks on the stairs, not at one in the morning. Ichigo got them up the four flights to his apartment and managed to fish his keys out of his pack without dropping his hold on Shiro. He kicked open the door and guided the white-haired man to the couch, letting him collapse there. Shiro just giggled again, though it was softer this time, absent, and closed his eyes. With another soft sigh, Ichigo pulled the blanket off the back of the couch and tossed it over him, then went to put his groceries away.

It wasn't logical to feel betrayed, he told himself as he wearily shoved the vegetables he had gotten into the crisper. He and Shiro weren't together anymore. He had kicked the other man out a month ago. It wasn't reasonable to think that Shiro would change his ways just because of something like that.

But Ichigo had wanted him to. Had wanted to mean enough to him that he would stop his downward spiral, pull himself out of the hole he had fallen into.

They had been happy together, before. When they had first met, Shiro had been working a steady job in the corner store, and Ichigo had been playing small-time gigs in clubs and cafés around the city. They had clicked, fit together, and Ichigo had fallen in love more completely than he had thought possible. It hadn't quite been a whirlwind romance, but it had been close. Within six months, they were living together happily, and Ichigo was having thoughts of _forever-together-family-home_, something he hadn't had since his family had been killed in an accident when he was a teenager. And, for all appearances, Shiro had been thinking the same.

But then Shiro had come home high one night, and everything had gone tumbling down around them.

Ichigo didn't blame himself for everything, but he knew he had to take a large part of it. He had never said anything, even when common sense told him he should. He had allowed Shiro to slide back into the world of his rebellious, stupid teenage years without saying a word to stop him until it was already too late.

By the time he challenged Shiro about the problem, nothing he said could change the other man's mind, and the confrontation degenerated into an argument. It wasn't their last one, either, and the quarrels got more and more heated, until they finally came to blows one night. Shiro was physically stronger, but Ichigo was faster and smarter and fought dirty, and the fight had ended with Shiro and his belongings out on the street, waiting for one of his friends, and Ichigo secure in his apartment, seething and hurt and angrier than he could ever remember being.

After all, Shiro had chosen the drugs over him. Ichigo had been abandoned far too much over the course of his life to forgive something like that.

* * *

Shiro woke slowly, his head throbbing and feeling as though it had been stuffed with cotton. He winced, sitting up. A blanket dropped off his shoulders, ad he frowned. Usually, after a night like the last, he would wake up in an alley somewhere, or on the ground in the park. Not…

He glanced around curiously, and felt his heart crystallize into ice.

Ichigo sat at the small dinner table, slumped forward on the scarred wood, his head pillowed on his crossed arms. There was a notebook digging in to his forearm, and a pen in the other hand was smearing ink all over the neat lines of notes on the paper. His eyes were closed, his mouth open slightly, and that ridiculously orange hair was falling all over his face. It looked like he hadn't cut it in months, even though Shiro _knew_ that he was a successful musician now, with a contract and an agent and many, many fans—knew because Nnoitra was a sadistic bastard who loved to rub it in his face, that Ichigo had only succeeded after Shiro had left him.

But Ichigo looked tired, too—even beyond the obvious. He was thinner, where there hadn't been much weight for him to lose in the first place, and there were bruise-like shadows under his eyes that caused Shiro physical pain just to see. They spoke of too many sleepless nights, and too many long days.

Was he, Shiro wondered, the cause for them?

He had always loved Ichigo, even when he only saw him form a distance, a beautiful customer in the store Shiro worked at. They had finally met and talked over Ichigo's search for something disgustingly healthy that Shiro had blocked from his mind. _Health nut_, he thought fondly, looking down at the man who had come, in a few short weeks, to mean absolutely everything to him.

And then he had met Nnoitra again, and everything went to hell.

Shiro had no excuse for slipping back into drugs. He had gotten out of them when he was younger and dumber, and freed himself before he could become heavily addicted. So if he had been able to walk away from that life before, why couldn't he now? It was partly fear, he knew, fear that Ichigo would someday see that he really was nothing, and leave him, and then Shiro would lose the one thing that had ever mattered. Perhaps, in a way, he was trying to _prove_ to himself that Ichigo wouldn't leave, no matter what he did, no matter what drugs he took or what he said in the heat of anger.

But it backfired. Ichigo had kicked him out, or he had left, or both, and he had lost it anyway.

The haze from last night's cocktail of drugs was fading slightly, leaving him with the mother of all hangovers, and he sighed, pushing to his feet. Carefully, he crossed the distance between them and draped the blanket over Ichigo's shoulders, then dropped to the floor and leaned back against the redhead's chair. He knew that he should leave, go back to the dirty, overcrowded room he had taken in Nnoitra's rundown shack, let Ichigo get back to his life of accomplishment and achievement, but he couldn't force himself to move. He physically couldn't leave. Ichigo still held him back, even now, even after all this time.

Behind him, Ichigo murmured something that sounded like _Shiro_ in his sleep and shifted, dropping one hand to curl in Shiro's pale hair. Shiro closed his eyes and smiled slightly to himself, reveling in the warmth of that gentle touch.

When Ichigo woke up, they would talk, he decided. Maybe, if Ichigo were willing, Shiro would look around for rehab options, and see if he couldn't fix what had broken between them. A week ago—an _hour_ ago—he wouldn't have had the strength, but he _missed_ Ichigo, and Ichigo had taken him back to the apartment when he could have left him shivering in an alley.

Maybe there was hope.


End file.
